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20 Year USA Presidential Curse
The alleged curse known as 20 Year USA Presidential Curse (more properly Curse of Tippecanoe also known as Tecumseh's Curse or the 20 Year Presidential Curse) is a supposed pattern of death in office of Presidents of the United States elected in years that are divisible by 20, from William Henry Harrison (elected in 1840) through John F. Kennedy (1960). Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980 and was wounded by gunshot, but he survived. George W. Bush (2000) survived his terms in office, despite an assassination attempt (but some guessed that the "real president" should had been Albert Gore . The Curse William Henry Harrison was elected president in 1840, but he died in 1841, just a month after being sworn in. Ripley's claimed to note a pattern in 1931 and again in 1948,Ripley's Believe it or Not, 2nd Series (Simon & Schuster, 1931); an updated reference is on page 140 of the Pocket Books paperback edition of 1948 claiming that a president elected in a year ending in zero would die in office. Curse of Tippecanoe They termed it the Curse of Tippecanoe. The name is derived from the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, when Harrison negotiated the 1809 Treaty of Fort Wayne, in which the Indians ceded large tracts of land to the government.The New Big Book Of U.S. Presidents By Todd Davis, Marc Frey The treaty further angered Shawnee leader Tecumseh and brought government soldiers and Indians to the brink of war in a period known as Tecumseh's War. Tecumseh and his brother organized a group of Indian tribes to resist the westward expansion of the United States. In 1811, Tecumseh's forces attacked Harrison's army in the Battle of Tippecanoe, earning Harrison fame and the nickname "Old Tippecanoe". In an account of the aftermath of the battle, Tecumseh's brother Tenskwatawa supposedly set a curse against Harrison. This is the basis of the curse legend, even though it was Richard Mentor Johnson who was said to be the man who killed Tecumseh.Randi Henderson and Tom Nugent, "The Zero Curse: More than just a coincidence?" (reprinted from the Baltimore Sun), November 2, 1980, in Syracuse Herald-American, p C-3 Media mentions Strange as it Seems by John Hix ran a cartoon prior to Election Day 1940 entitled "Curse over the White House!" and claiming that "In the last 100 years, Every U.S. President Elected at 20-Year Intervals Has Died In Office!"Oakland Tribune, November 5, 1940, p12 Exceptions Since 1963, no President has died in office, even when elected on twenty-year marks. The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 was not followed by his death in office, despite being seriously wounded in an assassination attempt within months of his 1981 inauguration.Presidential Prophecies, History Channel Days after Reagan survived the shooting, columnist Jack Anderson wrote "Reagan and the Eerie Zero Factor" and noted that the 40th president had either disproved the superstition, or had nine lives.The Sunday Intelligencer (Doylestown, PA), April 5, 1981, p 8 Reagan, the oldest man to be elected President at that time, also survived treatment for colon cancer while in office. First Lady Nancy Reagan was reported to have hired psychics and astrologers to try to protect her husband from the effects of the curse. However, the Reagans' son, Ron Reagan, revealed in his memoir that that Pres. Reagan began showing symptoms of Alzheimer’s as early as three years into his first term as president.My Father at 100: A Memoir (Penguin) Reagan left office on January 20, 1989, and ultimately died of pneumonia complicated by Alzheimer's disease on June 5, 2004, at the age of 93. The president elected in 2000, George Walker Bush, also survived two terms in office, which included fainting from choking on a pretzel in 2002, and a 2005 assassination attempt by Vladimir Arutyunian in which a live grenade was thrown at Bush and Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili but failed to explode. He completed his final term in office on January 20, 2009. Presidents in the line of the alleged curse See also * * * Similar curses and regularities: ** Bald–hairy, a regularity observed in the sequence of Russian rulers since 1825. ** ** ** References External links * The Curse of Tecumseh on Snopes.com *The Mortal Presidency: Film and Documentary Shapell Manuscript Foundation * Breaking Tecumseh's Curse Sources * Category:Curses Category:United States presidential history Category:Franklin D. Roosevelt Category:Assassination of Abraham Lincoln Category:Assassination of James A. Garfield Category:Assassination of William McKinley Category:Assassination of John F. Kennedy Category:United States Presidents and death